


The Show Must Go On

by kitnkabootle



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 07:41:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/884726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitnkabootle/pseuds/kitnkabootle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An original story based off of a video trailer combining four amazing actresses in one film.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Show Must Go On

**Author's Note:**

> To understand this fic see this: http://youtu.be/y0p7GqBm3Bw
> 
> The Cast:
> 
> Dr. Shifra Leipman - Barbra Streisand  
> Anne Ward - Meryl Streep  
> Georgeanna 'Gee' Kirsch - Catherine Deneuve  
> Ilse Lehrer - Stella Gonet

November 4th, 1939

I want to cry, but my eyes are dry.

There are times when I am ungrateful. These are at times when I feel powerless to change my circumstances. I have known this country, my Germany, since I was born. My family has blossomed from German soil, warmed by the German sun and nourished by the thick vines that spread deep beneath the foundation. Now they have been destroyed, tramped upon... pulled by the roots by those that used to be friends and confidants.

I have not seen my family, nor heard from them since that night, two months ago when I arrived home to an empty house. I knew from the moment I turned the key in the lock, that something felt wrong. My heart had pounded so forcefully in my breast that I could barely hear my own footsteps on the wooden stairs.

I had climbed to the top and searched every room but no one remained. I’d even checked the room we’d had built behind the false wall in mother and father’s bedroom, but it too remained unaltered, still stocked with the previsions we’d purchased with our rations back when they were still enough to get by.

When I’d reached the top of the stairs, I’d heard a footstep beside me all too late. A large hand had closed over my mouth and I struggled, though I knew it was in vain. I’d grown weak from the food restrictions. He held me tightly as he made me walk down the stairs of our large empty house. My house. The house my grandfather had built over fifty years ago that now seemed cold and barren.

Outside, in the front garden of my home, I saw her for the first time; The great actress, Georgeanna Kirsch. She was seated in the back of a black automobile. I didn’t need to be close to see that she was a striking woman with golden hair framing her sharp jaw, soft against her pale skin. A hat was pinned into the hair over her eyes but I knew she was not watching me.

She didn’t say a word to me after the man placed me into the car beside her. I too had remained silent. The journey felt endless, though I knew it couldn’t have been long. She spoke finally, and I felt relieved that she was the one to interrupt the stale air that filled my stomach and made me ill.

She explained why she was here. She had come for my family, and they were safe. There hadn’t been time to await my return. My family was being transported to England and I would follow too, very shortly.

It had not been as short as they’d imagined. There had been an incident with a young resistance group that had been infiltrated by Nazi officials in our area. The entire group had been executed in the public square. The officers began asking for papers from every single citizen that passed them by. It was impossible to move freely about the city.

That’s when I was taken to the theatre, dressed in one of Gee’s performance wigs, costume and painted with makeup. I’d almost been discovered at the stage door, but Gee had created a distraction, sliding her red tipped fingernails over the rough chin of one of the officers.

I had been Anne’s responsibility then. I didn’t know much of Anne, except I’d seen her in Gee’s presence on many occasions. Once, I’d walked in to Gee’s dressing room without knocking and had seen them step apart from one another too quickly. On another occasion I’d seen Anne’s hand press into the small of Gee’s back as she’d whispered something in her ear. I knew they seemed closer then two women ought to, but I didn’t question it. The war does strange things to people.

It was Anne who brought me here. Anne who escorted me from the theatre house one cold Autumn night and brought me to this home. Anne who introduced me to Ilse and consequently changed any remnants of my old life.

 

January 8th, 1940

 

I wish I could say when it happened. When I stopped worrying about my family and whether or not they’d arrived safely in England. When I stopped wondering if I’d ever see them again or if I’d ever feel safe to live in Germany. When I stopped questioning if it was the end of the world, and if we were all marching slowly towards a bitter end.

Ilse Lehrer. The name tastes powerful on my tongue. As the wife of a high ranking Nazi official, Ilse is the least likely candidate to harbour a Jewish refugee. But here I am, hidden away in the upstairs guest bedroom in the left wing of her townhouse. No servants come to see me and I am not permitted to leave the confines of my room.

My only visitor is Ilse. She comes to me mostly in the evening once the house has gone completely silent. She is a beautiful woman with sorrowful blue eyes that try to apologize for all of the harm forced upon German-Jewish citizens. It is not her fault and I do not condemn her for the injustices we face.

She has honey blond pin curls that sit against her rounded cheeks and the softest red lips that I’ve ever seen. She sits with me, in the chair nearest to my bed and tells me the news of the day. It is seldom good.

When she first started coming to my room, she would stand nearer to the door. She didn’t know me, after all. She wasn’t doing me a favour out of association. She was a friend of Georgeanna’s and a Jewish sympathizer. I hated being an imposition. She seemed nervous often, her eyes travelling intermittently towards the window. Sometimes she would stop in the middle of a sentence to listen at the door, as if her husband were about to storm in.

She didn’t talk about herself very often and I didn’t like talking about the past, so our conversations were somewhat limited to the advances of the war.

One day, I don’t recall when exactly (the days have escaped me), she crossed from the door and sat in the chair next to the dresser. She sat stiffly, her long fingers folded in her lap like a studious schoolgirl.

For the longest time she didn’t look at me. I didn’t know if I was meant to speak so I kept quiet, and ran my hands over my lap to smooth the lines out of my dress. When she did speak, I jumped because her voice came out harshly.

She told me she hated him. She hated the man she married as much as she hated the ‘bloody’ war. She told me he had spoken to her about a young boy he’d beaten to death in the street because he’d failed to produce his identification papers.

When she finally looked up at me, her cheeks were wet and her blue eyes were glassy and rimmed with red. I crossed to her then, kneeling before her and taking her trembling hands into mine. It was I who comforted her, suddenly feeling a little bit like myself again.

I am a doctor, after all. I am meant to help those in need. Being held up in a room somewhere while my people are enduring horrors beyond the imagination is ludicrous. Yet, my options aren’t only limited, but non-existent.

It feels good to comfort Ilse. To smooth those honey blond curls back from her face. To drag my thumbs very gently across her wet cheeks. I notice things about Ilse that I never do with others.

For instance, I noticed the fine lines that grace her forehead and the corners of her eyes with expression. I noticed the length of her neck and the elegant slope of skin that dips gently into the ridges of her collarbone. I can even tell if she’s been crying before she comes to see me by the telltale splotches of red along the base of her nose and just beneath her eyes.

We’ve grown close, Ilse and I. Well, as close as any two people can be under the circumstances. Each time we meet I feel as though we are becoming closer to each other’s world. I wonder if one day she will come in and we will find ourselves standing both on the earth, within reach.

 

February 2nd, 1940

 

I don’t know what has happened. I know I am myself but I am changed also. Something transpired today and I have not yet recovered. I don’t know if I should speak about it in the pages of even this secret journal, but I feel I must for fear that I should not have anyone else to turn to.

Ilse came to my room today. I had not seen her in as long as a week and while I had begun to worry about her, I had an inkling that her husband might be at home. She had told me before her sudden disappearance that I was to sleep beneath the bed in the room and not within it, until she returned. She also instructed that I was to be prepared to spend the daylight hours in the confines of the large wardrobe and that I was to read in there and rest out of plain sight.

I know she fears for my safety as much as hers and so I did as she told me. It was today that she returned to me.

I was sitting in the wardrobe, my legs aching as I stretched one foot before the other in an attempt to ease my discomfort. I’d forgotten the book I was reading beside me but the candle still burned in its holder, wax dribbling lazily down its sides.

She spoke before I saw her, putting my mind at ease as soon as she was able. It took only moments to open the wardrobe and step out to see her. She was wearing an olive green dress that made her eyes sparkle incandescently. She crossed the room to stand before me, but when we were only inches apart, she fumbled, her lips opening and closing as she shook her head.

Finally she told me that they Gee would be arranging to have me moved within the next few days. My safety had been compromised and she feared that her husband would grow suspicious if my stay was extended. I didn’t blame her for her worry and after all, her home was merely a stop along the treacherous road that had so suddenly become my life.

But she looked troubled, as if there were so much more to say. Then her expression changed, her blue eyes fixed on mine and her cheeks were flushed. I wanted to thank her for everything she’d done for me, but before I could speak I felt Ilse’s soft lips pressing to mine.

This was certainly not my first kiss. While I’m not married, I courted a young man when I was in my teens. This was different. Not only different because I was kissing a woman.

Ilse felt unfamiliar but warm and I enjoyed the feel of her tongue against my lips. I felt a quiver in the bottom of my belly and I wanted nothing more then to explore this, to experience more of what I’d never dared dream had been a possibility for me.

Her long fingers, elegant and white, laced into my dark hair and pulled it free of pins as she backed me to the bed. My heart was racing. I was afraid, I felt sinful... I felt unmistakably alive. Her mouth was moving aimlessly along my jaw and throat as she moved to pull up the hems of my skirts.

When I lay back on the white linen bedclothes, she crawled over me, so wild and untamed … a stranger from the woman I had once come to know as delicate and reserved.

It wasn’t romantic, or loving what we did. It was a passion born of lust and need. Her fingers moved against my underclothes and to my embarrassment I felt them getting damp under her ministrations. I could feel her breath against my chest and neck as she moaned so softly that it was barely audible.

Her breathing became more erratic to match my own as I fumbled with her skirt and pressed the flat of my hand between her thighs, our bodies hot and aching for release.

I can only imagine how we looked there in the pristine bedroom, our dresses pulled up to our hips, breathless and slick with cool sweat.

Her garters pulled at the stockings that clung to her shapely legs and I didn’t have the presence of mind to wonder if she worried about tearing them. Stockings were a precious find during war time.

But for an instance, the war didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that I would be leaving her any day and unlikely to ever return. It didn’t matter that we came from the same Germany but would be divided by faith and politics.

It was she and I, Ilse and Shifra, and for that one moment it felt as though the world might continue to turn. That there was hope for the people of Germany.

Then once she left, I felt the prickle and sting at my eyes. When I touched my cheek at the unfamiliar feeling, my fingers came away moistened with tears.

\-----  
The End

**Author's Note:**

> Originally Posted on LiveJournal - August 30th, 2011


End file.
